I first heard Holly’s name through another blogger, who said, “Do you know about Holly Burns? She’s this gorgeous world traveler with a British Accent. I thought she was fictional until I met her.” I met her myself a few months later, she was a travel writer at the time, and fell for her self-deprecating wit and penchant for doing things just-so. She’s a girl after my own particular heart.

HOLLY BURNS is beloved because:

– Holly is one of the best storytellers I know, and she conceives of the world as a narrative arc. For example, she met her husband Sean on the beach when she was sixteen. She was on a mission to meet an American boy, and he happened to be a sailor in the U.S. Navy. I could hear the story a million times, there’s always a new detail.

– Holly likes a solid checklist. I told her I was doing The Big Eat, and she was not only enthusiastic about hitting five restaurants in a single night with me, she made a map.

– Holly loves her family. Loves them as a defining characteristic of her being. As in, they have sing alongs at Christmas while her brother plays guitar, she goes to pub trivia nights with her father, and talks about how much she misses all of them when they’re not visiting. It’s pretty winning.

“No photographic evidence ever exists of [our family sing alongs], because it would be too easy for other people to use it as blackmail material. One year we took a video of us doing the Twelve Days of Christmas—complete with actions—and now none of us can ever run for public office.”

“The first time I laid eyes on Sean, I was sitting cross-legged in the parking lot of that beach in my JC Penney jeans. He rode up on a bicycle and started playing hackeysack. Ah, the nineties: simpler times. Times when a girl could like a boy who played hackeysack and not be ridiculed for it.”

In addition to being a great writer, Holly is also pretty darn crafty. Have a look at her Home DIYs. They will make you feel suitably inferior.

My Crush series is part of RedEnvelope’s Crush on You initiative, which is about showing gratitude to the people who make your life better.

I fell for Holly when she posted a photo of her wedding thank-you notes being kept under the glass dome of her cake plate. I had just married the man I met when I was 18 and was keeping my thank-you’s in the same exact place. She is a girl after my own particular heart, too.